Pencils Out - Linda Darling-Hammond about standardized testing in the implementation of Common Core

Pencils Out:

Pencils Out

GAVIN BADE

APRIL 8, 2014

The Prospect speaks with an education-policy expert Linda Darling-Hammond about standardized testing in the implementation of Common Core, a national set of guidelines on math and reading.

Courtesy of Stanford University

Linda Darling-Hammond

One of the most contentious debates racking state houses this year isn't about Obamacare, inequality, or even jobs. It's the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, which set benchmarks for what students should know in math and language arts at each grade level. At the current count, 44 states and the District of Columbia have signed on.

Some conservative legislators have objected to what they see as a step toward federalizing education; Indiana has withdrawn from the initiative and 11 states are considering bills to slow or derail Common Core implementation. Another source of friction is the adoption of standardized testing to measure students' knowledge of Common Core standards and, in some cases, evaluate teachers. The assessments have been designed by two state groups—the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium—but a growing number of states are opting out and instead coming up with their own. Many education scholars also contend the tests don't assess students’ multiple intelligences and connect to real-world skills and tasks.

Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who led President Obama’s education-policy transition team after his election in 2008, is one such figure. She is also a member of the Gordon Commission for the Future of Assessment and Education, a group of scholars overseeing the implementation of the Common Core. The Prospect sat down with Darling-Hammond to discuss Pencils Out:

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit 4-16-14

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit:

1st ANNUAL FERNANDO JONES’ BLUES CAMP LOS ANGELES COMES TO LAUSD!

by smf for 4LAKidsNews At the risk of taking credit where other people did all the work I am pleased to forward this info along on a project I helped set up by introducing my friend Chiara Tellini to my friend Tony White. We also serve who say "Chiara, meet Tony" ...and then just stand back! Your job - and you have no other choice but to accept - is to pass this word on to every music te

1 by smf / 1h 

DISTRICTS FACE CHALENGE OF PRIORITIZING PUBLIC INPUT ON SCHOOL SPENDING + smf’s 2¢

By Louis Freedberg | EdSource Today http://bit.ly/1iZj3lv April 15th, 2014 | California’s school funding reform law has triggered a burst of outreach efforts to solicit parent and community input in at least some districts – along with a plethora of suggestions about how to spend the additional education funds they will receive from the state. But what is not clear is how these

by smf / 1h hide  //  save

API SUSPENDED …BUT NOT ACCOUNTABILITY MANDATES + smf’s 2¢

by Kimberly Beltran, SI&A Cabinet Report :: http://bit.ly/1qImMZL APRIL 16, 2014  ::  (Calif.) With scores for the annual Academic Performance Index suspended for the next two years, school districts will still be required to meet accountability mandates set out in the Gov. Jerry Brown’s new Local Control Funding Formula. Under a plan detailed Tuesday, districts will be allowed to use one of

by smf / 2h 

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit 4-15-14

4LAKids - some of the news that doesn't fit: Compare+Contrast: PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT IS OVERRATED + TEACHERS OFTEN BLAME PARENTS FOR PROBLEM STUDENTS + smf’s 2¢Parental Involvement Is Overrated By KEITH ROBINSON and ANGEL L. HARRIS, OpEd in the New York Times |  http://nyti.ms/1ilF0xt April 12, 2014, 2:32 pm ::  Most people, asked whether parental involvement benefits children academically, would s

by mike simpson / 6h 

4-16-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School:

How Will NYSED Defend These Lawsuits Against APPR?

Rochester teachers filed suit over the APPR teacher evaluation system last month, now Syracuse teachers file suit as well:The Syracuse Teachers Association sued the state Education Department today over its teacher evaluation system, arguing that the system unfairly penalizes teachers of disadvantaged students. The suit was filed in state Supreme Court in Albany by the STA and about 30 city teach

by reality-based edu... / 39min 

No Surprise - Study Says U.S. Is An Oligarchy

The more money you have, the more say you get in how things get run:A new study by researchers from Princeton and Northwestern Universities finds that America's government policies reflect the wishes of the rich and of powerful interest groups, rather than the wishes of the majority of citizens. The researchers examined close to 1,800 U.S. policy changes in the years between 1981 and 2002; then, t

by reality-based edu... / 31min 

Ravitch: Andrew Cuomo Had His Tentacles In The Paterson Administration

Richard Ravitch is publishing a memoir that says Cuomo's been running things longer than you think:In the summer of 2009, Republicans who lost their half-century control of the Senate mounted a coup with three dissident Democrats. That power struggle gridlocked the legislature for weeks until the dissidents struck deals for lucrative leadership posts in return for going back into the Democratic fo

by reality-based edu... / 48min 

Buffalo News: Opt-Out Movement Gains Steam, Notice Of State Educrats

On the margins no more:A boycott movement that has turned state standardized tests into a battleground is dividing school districts across the region and drawing the attention of state education leaders.Roughly 7 percent of students in third through eighth grade in Erie and Niagara counties refused to take a state English exam earlier this month.But in some districts, 15 to 28 percent of the stude

by reality-based edu... / 27min 

Wall Street Journal Covers ATR's

The Wall Street Journal reports that the ATR issue is a major part of the contract discussion:As negotiations drag on over a new contract for the city's teachers, one sticky issue involves how to handle teachers who lost permanent jobs during cutbacks but keep getting full paychecks as they bounce around schools for brief stints, filling in for absent staff.Hundreds spend years in limbo. A city De

by reality-based edu... / 1h hide  //  save

Bloomberg Still An Arrogant Ass

The NY Times publishes a puff piece on Bloomberg and his "philanthropy work" this morning and at the end, we get this statement from Mayor Mike:Mr. Bloomberg was introspective as he spoke, and seemed both restless and wistful. When he sat down for the interview, it was a few days before his 50th college reunion. His mortality has started dawning on him, at 72. And he admitted he was a bi

2 by reality-based edu... / 2h  

4-15-14 Perdido Street School Week

Perdido Street School: How Cuomo Meddled Into The Moreland Commission ReportAnother story about just how much meddling the governor's office did into the Moreland Commission work:An assistant counsel to Governor Andrew Cuomo, who professed himself to be the author of the NY SAFE Act, was ultimately selected as the lead writer of the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption’s December 2013 report a

by mike simpson / 8h 

Pay-for-Performance for CEOs and Teachers | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Pay-for-Performance for CEOs and Teachers | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Pay-for-Performance for CEOs and Teachers

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison earns $37,692 an hour. No, that is not a typo or misplaced comma. Ellison’ annual salary ran $78.4 million, much of it in stock option awards. His salary was based on the annual performance of the company’s stock. Oracle’s Board of Directors set the pay scale (Ellison owns one-fourth of the company’s shares) to spur better management to increase profits and shareholders’ dividends.

They pay Ellison to perform well on the metric they have chosen (“company earnings before income taxes minus the costs of stock-based compensation, acquisitions, restructuring, and other items.” This CEO’s performance pay is not, however, a metric used by other major corporations for paying their top person. I return to the point of different measures used by companies to judge CEO performance later.

Switch now to the average U.S. public school teacher who earns an annual salary of over $55,000. That figure translates to around $27.00 for a 40-hour week. Like Ellison, hundreds of thousands of teachers are involved in pay-for-performance plans. In response to the federal Race To the Top competition, many states have mandated that teachers’ performance and salary be tied to students’ test scores to spur better teaching and student learning. Those test scores, as a factor in assessing effectiveness and determining salary (or Pay-for-Performance for CEOs and Teachers | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

API suspended but not accountability mandates :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

API suspended but not accountability mandates :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:



APRIL 16, 2014

API suspended but not accountability mandates

by Kimberly Beltran

(Calif.) With scores for the annual Academic Performance Index suspended for the next two years, school districts will still be required to meet accountability mandates set out in the Gov. Jerry Brown’s new Local Control Funding Formula.

Under a plan detailed Tuesday, districts will be allowed to use one of three options: last year’s API scores; an average of the last three years of scores; or a combination of several other scoring measures tied to the LCFF but still being refined.

“The state board did approve your recommendation to not to calculate an API for either elementary, middle or high schools this coming fall,” said Keric Ashley, director of accountability at the California Department of Education, during a meeting of the panel convened to make recommendations on restructuring the API.

“AB 484 did envision the possibility of not having an API and allows for the use of last year’s scores, so we will be rolling over last year’s scores and keeping them available for any purpose that’s needed, including for districts’ Local Control Accountability Plans,” he said, referring to legislation that ushered in state testing changes.

Up to now, the state’s API was used to measure student progress and to meet federal accountability requirements. Also until now, the API had been calculated using only student test scores – configured to give a school an overall score ranging between 200 and 1,000, with the state API suspended but not accountability mandates :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Can A Child Be Accused of Insubordination for Refusing the Test? | Missouri Education Watchdog

Can A Child Be Accused of Insubordination for Refusing the Test? | Missouri Education Watchdog:

Can A Child Be Accused of Insubordination for Refusing the Test?

inShare

 A Nevada mom contacted me about the issues arising from a parent’s request to opt his child out of standardized testing and her letter appears below:

Whose Child is this Anyway?

 For the past several months parents of public school children have been asking, insisting, and demanding that their children not be forced to take a standardized test.  Why are parents of public school children asking, insisting, and demanding that their children not be forced to take standardized tests? 

Here’s the answer – Because parents are being kicked to the curb by people in positions that they have somehow, elevated in their own minds, as being larger or otherwise more important than the parents.  When a parent makes a decision for their child that decision is recognized by natural law, if not out of respect or deference to the parent.  Furthermore, the parent need not give a reason.  Why you ask – because parents are the final authority.

 It’s a fringe thought isn’t it?  Parents have not only a say in their children’s lives but they have the say in their children’s lives?  One more time – parents have not only a say in their children’s lives but the

Can A Child Be Accused of Insubordination for Refusing the Test? | Missouri Education Watchdog:

Inviting the Fox Right Into the Henhouse | janresseger

Inviting the Fox Right Into the Henhouse | janresseger:

Inviting the Fox Right Into the Henhouse

Posted on April 16, 2014 by janresseger

Ohio sends $1 billion every year out of its public education budget to charter schools and vouchers.  According to Doug Livingston at the Akron Beacon-Journal, Ohio’s charter schools and their sponsors are so poorly regulated by the state legislature that the private companies hired by nonprofits to manage their charter schools have been known to recruit (and fire) members of the boards whose responsibility it is to oversee and regulate the management companies.  “In Ohio, charter schools are required to satisfy strict federal guidelines as nonprofit organizations under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue code, including board autonomy.  If the board is not independent of the company, the IRS is supposed to throw up a red flag.  But state law allows private companies to throw out non-profit boards that challenge them.”  White Hat Management is known for such practices.

Leaders in the state legislature that brought Ohio this lucrative arrangement for wealthy White Hat charter czar David Brennan and cyber-charter parasite William Lager, the owner of two privately-held companies that siphon $100 million annually from Ohio’s school budget for the services provided to the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, now want to remove the constitutional checks and balances that protect the allocation and distribution of the state’s public school budget.

The legislature has created a Constitutional Modernization Commission that seeks to remove the state’s public education clause from the 160-year-old Ohio Constitution.  Writing for theAkron Beacon-Journal, Carol Biliczky reports that the Commission’s education committee chair, Chad Readler, a Columbus attorney who has prominently represented the interests of charter schools in recent years, “suggested removing the ‘thorough and efficient’ clause Inviting the Fox Right Into the Henhouse | janresseger:

NYC Educator: The Old, Old Song, and the Never-ending Battle Between Students and Teachers

NYC Educator: The Old, Old Song, and the Never-ending Battle Between Students and Teachers:

The Old, Old Song, and the Never-ending Battle Between Students and Teachers

Last year I had a student who was a big fan of the band Queen. Actually I don't know the precise extent of his love for the band, but I'm certain he enjoyed the song, "We Will Rock You." I know this because he was fond of the rhythm, and regularly expressed it by stomping on the floor and hitting the desk. At first a look would stop it, but as the year wore on it became longer and more persistent, and more and more students would join in.

Toward the end of the year it got long enough that he actually started singing, "We will, we will rock you," once or twice. It was kind of cute that the class joined him, and kind of funny that it started apropos of nothing. So the first few times it got that far I kind of did a slow burn and let them do it.

After a while, though, I realized my neighbor in the adjacent trailer was not as tolerant as I was. After all, where in the Danielson rubric were we gonna get points for organized singing. So I decided to put a stop to it. "You can't do that anymore until you learn the verses," I proclaimed, and it stopped for a few days.

However, the next time it started, he actually had the words. I couldn't really verify whether or not they were correct since I don't know the verses myself. There was something pretty funny about hearing them sung with an accent far different from that of Freddie Mercury, but once again I thought about being a good neighbor, and told him, "You haven't learned the 

Opinion: What's Good for Our Teachers Is Good for Our Students - NJ Spotlight

Opinion: What's Good for Our Teachers Is Good for Our Students - NJ Spotlight:

OPINION: WHAT'S GOOD FOR OUR TEACHERS IS GOOD FOR OUR STUDENTS

MARK WEBER | APRIL 16, 2014

Attempts to deprecate or demonize teachers when they stand up for themselves are bad for our kids' education

Why is teaching the only profession in New Jersey (and the nation) where employees are criticized for standing up for themselves?

In Newark, the teachers union has decried a plan, proposed by State Superintendent Cami Anderson, to bypass laws requiring the use of seniority in layoffs. Considering the NTU just ratified a contract in 2012 that included unprecedented provisions for merit pay and teacher evaluation, the Newark Teachers Union felt blindsided by Anderson’s request for a waiver from seniority laws.

Her response?

An op-ed in the Huffington Post that chides her critics for criticizing what she describes as “. . . bold proposals that challenge sacred cows -- and adult interests embedded in the status quo.”

In other words: Anderson thinks it’s wrong for Newark’s teachers to demand that the laws that protect the interests of educators in other districts apply to them as well, because standing up for themselves perpetuates a “status quo” harmful to children.

New Jersey’s former Education Commissioner Chris Cerf was also given to making oblique statements that took teachers and their unions to task when they advocated for themselves. Cerf saw himself as a crusader who stood up against those who “… focus on adult interests at the expense of children’s interests.”

MAYORAL RIVALS FIND COMMON FOE IN STATE CONTROL OF NEWARK SCHOOLS

JOHN MOONEY | APRIL 16, 2014

Both candidates promise to pose challenges for state’s new education commissioner

Newark mayoral candidate Ras Baraka

Even thought they hold no legal authority over the public schools, Newark’s mayors through the years have never been shy about expressing their views – and exerting their considerable influence – over the state’s largest school district.

This spring’s contentious race between mayoral candidates Ras Baraka and Shavar Jeffries is proving to be no exception, with the state of the schools at the center of the campaign in many ways.

Baraka, a city councilman and principal of the city’s Central High School, has drawn some of his biggest support from those opposed to the state’s ongoing control of the school district and, specifically, the leadership of Superintendent Cami Anderson, who was appointed by Gov. Chris Christie three years ago.

Jeffries, a Seton Hall law professor and former assistant state attorney general, comes from the school-reform camp that Baraka opposes and was among the founding board members of the city’s largest charter school network.

But in the weeks leading up to the May 13 vote, where it has gotten especially interesting is that a common ground has emerged in the candidates’ views of the state’s operation of the city’s schools and Anderson’s leadership.

Newark mayoral candidate Shavar Jeffries

Jefferies, a former chair of the School 

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: New study on inequity and teacher "effectiveness" misses the mark

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: New study on inequity and teacher "effectiveness" misses the mark:

New study on inequity and teacher "effectiveness" misses the mark

Yes, there's lots of evidence to show poor kids and children of color are generally being taught by teachers with less experience (or no experience) which puts them at a severe disadvantage. But the Huffington headline calling schools "racist" is one-sided and misleading. Credit instead should go to Race To The Top. To TFA. To the power philanthropists, corporate reformers, re-segregationists and private charter operators. They all contribute on this.

But a recent study from Center For American Progress takes this worthwhile exposure of discrimination and inequality to a different level. After basing their study on the new evaluation practices and teacher rating systems now in place in Louisiana and Massachusetts and accepting the premise that teacher quality can be assessed entirely or mainly on the basis of student test scores, (La. requires every teacher to be evaluated, with 50% of the evaluation rating based on test scores or  "student growth") they conclude that minority students have Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: New study on inequity and teacher "effectiveness" misses the mark: